1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods of and apparatus for conducting binaural teleconferences and, in particular, to a teleconferencing bridge that simulates the auditory spatial ambience of a face-to-face conference. Accordingly, it is a general object of this invention to provide new and improved apparatus, methods, and bridges of such character.
2. General Background
Voice teleconferences, in the prior art, were conducted using monaural methods. The disadvantages of monaural teleconferencing are twofold: First, monaural teleconferencing does not permit simultaneous talking without loss of intelligibility. This is particularly true when simultaneous voices are acoustically similar. Second, it was often difficult to identify the speaker during a voice teleconference on the basis of monaural voice acoustic parameters alone.
The binaural voice teleconferencing bridge, as described herein, solves both of the foregoing problems. Binaural hearing is responsible for the "cocktail party effect". This effect permits a listener to selectively attend to a single talker in a milieu of several potentially interfering conversations. Therefore, simultaneous talking is not a problem with binaural teleconferencing. Also, psychological research has shown that speakers are much more readily identified when their spatial location is known. Speaker identifiability, in the prior art, was significantly reduced with monaural voice teleconferencing.